EZTrip.com International Destination Guide and Hotel Listings

If you're not walking, you should follows a signpost off the A2 to reach HELEN'S BAY , which is also a stop on the Belfast-Bangor train line. It's a rather twee but restful little place, with a red-painted Scots Baronial-style station. Down at the bay itself, a walking path leads east to Grey Point Fort (April-Sept Mon & Wed-Sun 2-5pm; Oct-March Sun 2-5pm; free), positioned to command the mouth of Belfast Lough, along with its sister fort at Kilroot on the other side. The fort has what you'd expect by way of quarters and stores, as well as an impressive battery of gun emplacements, ready to challenge the shipping that entered the lough during the two world wars. In the event, the two six-inch breech-loading guns were never fired except in practice (local residents had to be warned to open their windows and doors to prevent blast damage), apart from one occasion in World War II, when a merchant ship failed to respond to the signal "heave to or be sunk" and received a warning shot across its bows. The guns were sold for scrap in 1957 when the Coast Artillery was disbanded. After the fort was opened to the public in 1987 an identical six-inch gun was relocated here from the prison on Spike Island in Cork harbour. The Battery Observation Post and Fire Command Post are today staffed by dressed-up mannequins, like stills taken from a war movie - though they're now staring straight into a growth of trees that have sprung up to obscure the view. There's also a selection of photos showing the original guns and their positions; but it's really as a viewpoint with an atmosphere of military history, rather than the other way round, that the fort is worth visiting nowadays.

Should you want to stay, there's a classy B&B , Carrig-Gorm , 27 Bridge Rd (tel 028/9185 3680; £40-55), with equally stylish Mediterranean food in Carriage Nouveau (Tues-Sat eves & Sunday lunch; booking required on tel 028/9185 2841).